Liminal Time
by TheStripedyZebra
Summary: "It disappears as his absence rushes over your ringing ears and presses your eyes shut just before you plunge into an invigorating existence beyond time." One-shot. Angst. Slash. I'm amazing at summaries, I know.


There's something about his skin. The pale length of his arm begs you to color the smooth planes and fine hairs with memory and regret and love and your countless, reckless promises.

Add the sunrise inching over his arched back as his eyes shone as violent and frightening as the waves slamming into the cliffs beneath you, press that moment into the crook of his elbow with reverent, tentative fingertips. Don't forget to remind him of candlelit shadows flickering off flushed and gleaming skin as pallid moonlight washed over the cobblestones of hushed streets below in this night of abandon by brushing your lips over closed eyelids- just _maybe_ they'll flicker open.

Try murmuring against his skin, your breath warm and hopefully familiar, promising another night like Paris, winking stars and cheap wine causing him to throw his head back with uninhibited laughter and dilated pupils, lending him life and a half-crazed smile in his incredulity that the world could feel like _this_, after knowing nothing outside of years of bruises and soot and grime and raging emptiness.

Just maybe, maybe his eyes will crinkle and his teeth will gleam out of this half light if you remind him of an ache, a bone-deep thrill as you both thundered over shaded earth on blurs of midnight and shining chestnut beneath rippling green sunlight, exhilarated guffaws tossed over his shoulder as he galloped ahead, challenging you to "Keep up, Clotpole," even though that's _your_word- but how could you mind when he looks so heartbreakingly free and _happy_as he races ahead, bliss lingering in his wake each time he whips around to smile at you, assure you there's no where else he's meant to be.

You're left to thread your fingers through his dulled hair, pressing patterns and maps and sweet bloody _nothings_into his translucent, indifferent skin- he's outside of time now, he's left you to fend against these lengthening shadows alone, left you stranded, infuriatingly helpless in your no longer shared memories.

You're so alive it makes you sick. Your pulse thrums, glaring and grieving and angry against the steady beat of his own, a pathetic imitation of the one you'd pressed your lips against in every lifetime you've known it- a powerful, promising drum that had only ever been yours.

This contrast is nauseating. Your skin is crawling and you need to get out before your aching loneliness taints him, ruins him entirely.

Now his yielding flesh burns and you drop his unfeeling hand just as salt splits against it and you run, heaving and crackling, away from your one constant, the most important thing you've ever known, you put clarifying distance between yourself and all you've lost.

Stop. You look around you as you feel your graying fringe twitching in raw, churning cold and the tips of your toes linger in empty air. Don't look down to find impossibility and perplexing blue reflecting the erratic beating of your heart.

A deep breath and you swear you can catch a faint hint of his familiar, inviting musk, but it disappears as his absence rushes over your ringing ears and presses your eyes shut just before you plunge into an invigorating existence beyond time.

A crack of garish white filters into your consciousness and you glance over to your side. A heaviness of oversleeping and missing something vital weigh on your chest as you sit up, and glance to the table to the side. A silvered ring rests atop a neat square of white paper, which appears to have a slight tear at one edge. You reach out, move the ring aside with careful fingers, wondering whose it is as you brush a wisp of blond hair out of your eyes. You unfold the scrap and glance down to find the words, "_You're braver than you look, Merlin_," scrawled hastily and with a small blotch on the final word. You cock your head to the side and ignore the small tug in the back of your mind urging you to recognize the words, and instead you crumple the small sheet and place it on the table inside the ring and jam the call button above your head, in need of water.


End file.
